


smiles, lies, gunfire

by iimpavid



Category: The Dark Tower (2017), The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Western, Gen, Hypnosis, M/M, Peter Nureyev's Alias Catalog
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-28 09:40:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21134618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iimpavid/pseuds/iimpavid
Summary: There was a brief pause before the gunslinger's eyes flicked to meet his. They were the same living blue as the sky. Then he did something entirely unexpected: he smiled. "The name's Juno Steel. I take my whiskey neat."





	smiles, lies, gunfire

**Author's Note:**

> Someone on some server wanted to see Peter Nureyev with a Southern accent. I'm pretty sure this wasn't a serious suggestion but I ran with it anyway because I will never pass up an opportunity to deceive folks into reading about my First Ever Fandom.
> 
> I got tired of looking at this. It's unbeta'd because I have an image to upkeep.

Fairstead wasn’t a quiet town, quite. Positioned midway to the Tower, the highway bisecting it bustled nearly year-round with stages from the Inner Baronies and the Calas alike and somewhere in it, a king’s ransom had been hidden. The gunslinger had been in there no less than three hours before the news of his questions had circulated fully in the rumor mill. He was looking for a bank robber or a murderer or a witch or some other such unlucky soul-- or so the gossip went.

The barkeep, of course, had been expecting the gunslinger to turn up most of the day. For longer than that, even. The expecting didn't keep him from his work. The Yoraba would run him out of the barony and that was to say nothing of what Cora Seleny might do when she caught up with him if her steady supply of forgeries dried up. He was nothing if not a consummate professional. And so he worked. Work, in this instance, on this particular night, was nothing more exciting than bartending. 

The piano was fit to combust under Shemi's relentless and ragged rhythm, and he was down to his shirtsleeves, hot gas light glinting off his spectacles and hair beginning to slip from its coiffure. That's about the time the gunslinger saw fit to join the crowd. He got second and third glances from just about everyone in the room. A new face had that effect, even here. 

There was a rough elegance about him as he took off his hat and surveilled the room as he made his way to the bar without a hint of discomfort. Red dust clung to his boots, the hem of his coat. He sidestepped Maurice gracefully as the boy, inattentive as ever, darted by with a tray full of piping hot plates. He gave the ladies upstairs a polite wave when they noticed him and catcalled. From the sound of it, at least two of them had seen him before and were glad to see him again. He wore a bandanna around his neck that had faded long ago from violet to a soft grey-- he'd been on the road a long time.

The picture of nonchalance, he leaned against the bar. "What's a lady gotta do to get a whiskey around here?" 

"Why, all you have to do is ask," the bartender drawled. "But it'll cost you." The gunslinger reached for the purse on his belt and he waved him off, "Oh, not money. I just wanna know your name, is all." 

There was a brief pause before the gunslinger's eyes flicked to meet his. They were the same living blue as the sky. Then he did something entirely unexpected: he smiled. "The name’s Juno Steel. I take my whiskey neat."

Rather than get caught looking like a flower turned toward the sunrise, he smiled in turn and pulled the best bottle the Yoraba had on hand and cracked it open, just for him. "Byron Mendax, at your service. I'm new ‘round these parts and it isn't often we get the law around here-- surprising given the givens, but I s’ppose that’s just the way of the world -- y'can't really blame me for bein' curious, can you?"

"Nope, it's perfectly natural." But as he sat at the bar, it was clear he had no intention of doing a thing to assuage Byron’s confessed curiosity.

Respectful of the quality of the whiskey, or else broke and wanting to make it last, Juno drank slowly. He watched the way Mendax watched him. He was used to being a new face. But he was set enough on  _ something  _ to stay planted there at the bar. To turn down Iris, a feat few people ever managed between her helichrysum perfume and her many charms. The guns slung low over his hips were a license to kill and his mere presence was captivating.

The gunslinger—  _ Juno Steel, _ there was nothing noble in that name, not where bloodlines were concerned, anyway— began to fidget.

Not to  _ fidget _ . Not quite that. More clearly: he pulled an empty shell casing from his pocket and started  _ playing  _ with it. An old sleight of hand trick, usually better done with coins, rolling it over the backs of his knuckles.

Byron watched from the corner of his eye, annoyed that he wasn’t doing it the right way. He had the bullet balanced parallel to his fingers, not running perpendicular to them which would have made more sense, provided better grip, better control. But that wasn’t exactly something he could say.

The gunslinger watched him watching and slowed. Reversed the bullet’s direction with a faint twitch of his pinky, leaving it to balance lengthwise on the last knuckle of his ring finger, still as if it’d been glued there.

“Say, that sure is something,” Byron said, in an admiring tone he himself found confusing. It wasn’t anything he couldn’t do, if he wanted to, if he practiced a little to get a feel for the shape of a bullet, but he wanted to watch Juno Steel do it some more instead. “Where’d you learn t’do that?” 

“Around,” the gunslinger shrugged. “You get bored, you pick things up, you know how it is.”

Nothing in his posture was anything but the picture of relaxation, a person so safe in the knowledge of his own competence, his own dangerousness, that being in a bar owned by none other than the Yoraba didn’t bother him one whit. But his eyes were blue and fathomless. 

Byron tore his gaze from the bullet weaving lazily over and under Juno’s fingers. He adjusted his spectacles to sit higher on his nose and set down the glass he was polishing so he could start on another. “I’m sure I do.”

“Where’re you from? If you don’t mind me asking-- it’s just, you don’t sound inner-barony...” he frowned, considering. He set the bullet in motion again. The thing could have had a life of its own. Byron couldn’t help but watch it.

The light shifted, shadows softened. 

The bar was never quiet this time of night but it faded from importance.

“My, my, what an ear you have, sir. I only come by the baronies on my mother’s side. I’m… Outer Rim, originally, or thereabouts.” 

“What made you wanna come to a place like Fairstead? Wanted to seek your fortune in the big city?” 

“Oh, just work. One goes where one must when the only other option is going hungry.” The cadence of his voice lifted as smoothly as the shell lifted over the backs of Juno’s fingers and looking more like a rippling current, the sun off a stream. 

The road he’d taken to get here (the Path of the Hare was more of a highway but in some places, it was still humble) followed along a remarkably steady little stream. Barely deep enough to wade across and babbling, always, about nothing of particular consequence. It’d kept him good company between townships. So far from Brahma’s market bustle, or indeed anything familiar, he had appreciated the quiet, the lack of bad memories. It ran still just outside of Fairstead, running steadily along the path of the Hare all the way to the Tower and the Way of the Bat beyond it. It would, eventually, pull him away from here, too. 

“I have business elsewhere,” he found himself telling the stream of light flickering in the gunslinger’s hand-- for such a bright light it was soft. He couldn’t reach out and touch it because of the glass in his hands and he couldn’t even bring himself to put that down, either. The only thing for it was to watch-- “but only after I tie up a few loose ends. The Yoraba are powerful enemies under the right circumstances.” 

“What circumstances are those?” 

Byron blinked. Was immediately aware that he was not supposed to have blinked. He regretted doing it. But the ebb and flow of light over the gunslinger’s hand persisted without his attention. Relief at that fact showed plain across his face. 

He watched it for a few deep breaths. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” 

“Try me.” 

It was a calculated push.

Byron’s eyes drifted from the bullet to Juno. Once again in that genteel tone that clearly did not belong to him, he asked, “How do you like riddles, gunslinger?” 

**Author's Note:**

> Probably won't go much further. (Gotta stay on brand, can't let y'all get used to me finishing things.)
> 
> P.S. Do us both a favor and never EVER see that abomination of a movie that came out in 2017 and tried to call itself "The Dark Tower", k? K.


End file.
